There's just the four things to track: Aspects (Bravery, Innocence, Kindness, they're like skills); Resources (Light, Map, Secrets, they're your risk-to-continue currency); Soul Resilience (your ability to continue in the Forest, roughly hit-point-like); and the progress of the Brothers Six. It's all on your character sheet and any unusual interactions are explained in the adventure pages when you encounter them.

My wife and I were discussing stranger things, and while it is associated with D&D due to all the allusions, Call of Cthulhu seems like a better game for the setting. Has anyone already done a CoC skin for Stranger things?

@C.Ross Depends which part of Stranger Things. By season 3, there are simultaneous narratives of different genres, depending on whose storyline is in focus (e.g. "run away from scary things" vs "shoot scary things")

Also if you wanted a bonds/friendships/relationships mechanic, CoC doesn't really provide that. But if you're trying to replicate the feel of the adult characters' narrative in Stranger Things, then yes, CoC could probably suffice.

The Bellairs Falls drift has solid rules for knowing about Weird Stuff without doing Weird Stuff (the kids figuring stuff out based on their experience with D&D and consulting their science teacher) and also being able to do magic but often at the cost of losing Cool and gaining obsessions.

@C.Ross Bubblegumshoe's fight mechanics spend most of their time at the "scuffling to see who's going to be socially dominant" level, and when stuff gets lethal it's a serious choice. To reflect that, the horror drifts add the skill "Fleeing."

@C.Ross On further thought, you could also replicate the highschool characters' narrative style using CoC, since it's tonally in between the adult and child stories, and does mix desperate combat with panicked fleeing, both of which CoC can do

"ring the bell" umm ok. Which bell? Why? "There are two bells"...ok... Still don't know what they do or why I'm ringing them... Or where they are. "One above, one below"... Great. Thanks. I'll mark it on my map

I've got some messy code that is supposed to keep adding Monsters to a Room, until an XP cap is breached. But I've tweaked it to try to repeat monsters that are already there, rather than lost of different types. And nothing adds up ...

Can you use the 3rd level or higher part of Invisibility to make a small group invisible but still able to see each other, like Cloak the Gathering can?
Invisibility states:
A creature you touch becomes invisible until the spell ends. Anything
the target is wearing or carrying is invisible...

@BlackSpike Yeah, the loop doesn't seem to account for # of monsters, or XP per monster, and it risks adding monsters such that you exceed the XP cap

The 50/50 chance is weird. Instead of adding 1 monster at a time, I'd have it select monster type based on XP remaining, and insert a random number of instances between 1 and floor((XP remaining) / (XP per this monster)).

And if there's still XP remaining, then repeat for a different monster type

@BlackSpike Randon thought, that may have already been brought up... Might be worthwhile doing like, a "Creature:XP Value". So like, "Goblin:5 XP" then you can have modifiers that multiply the xp "Elite:1.5x"

QUESTION: If a Barbarian enters a Rage on their first turn, and does not attack, and furthermore has taken no damage yet in this fight, does the rage cease at the end of that same turn?
Reference: A player at our game wanted a multiclassed Moon Druid/Barbarian to combine Wild Shape and Rage. T...

I have seen several questions similar to this one closed for being too broad, but it certainly seems like an often-enough asked question that I will attempt to narrow the focus down such that it is both answerable and useful.
As an online GM in the past, I have had multiple players apply for m...

Experience-based answers are totally within the Stack paradigm; the only problem is if the asker is unable or unwilling to provide enough context for voters to be reasonable confident if an answerer's experience is applicable to the asker's situation.

I voted to close as opinion based because I am near-certain that it's going to attract a bunch of really crappy, opinion-based answers. Which isn't to say that the question is inherently opinion-based.

To my thinking, there's a biiiiig fuzzy area in there. If a question seems good but gets a lot of crap answers, perhaps it's just unfortunate and protection would be the "right" thing to do. Or perhaps there's something in the question that actually is weak/poor and attracting answers that are obviously bad, but I'm not smart enough to put my finger on what exactly in the question is causing the problem.

I VTC'd because it's currently a poll question, and unclear what problem they're trying to address. If their question is "how do I play a CE character and also be okay with my group" then it's highly dependent on their particular group, and thus still opinion.

I provided the asker a link to our meta on what makes a decent alignment question. We'll see if that was helpful, or not helpful. Not sure we aren't seeing an X-Y here, and it's late for me so good night to you all. Be well.

I will say that the question under consideration probably should be narrowed to be edition-specific though

because there are two distinctly different cases where this can crop up: 1) is the player wants their character to be CE while 2) is that the character is forced into that alignment box by the mechanics (race/class/alignment interlocking is a problem that plagued D&D up until about 4e or so?)

in the former case, addressing the players desires square-on is the correct move, while for the latter, it requires addressing the DM side as well

I recently asked this question which has been voted to be closed 4 times as of this writing for being primarily opinion based. However, the question was written specifically to ask for experience-based answers.
After reviewing this meta post, it does appear to follow all guidelines for alignment...

@linksassin I work in a small office, so I hear everyone complaining that "this thing isn't working. I've done it 4 times and I keep getting the same error." So I come and watch, not even say anything, just watch, and it works.

One guy actually just asked me to "come here for a sec". When I did, they were working on something, then when they finished, they just said "Ok tanks, that was all".

@linksassin Usually, yeah. Sometimes I get issues where I have to remind them of a step, or they go "oh I missed this step, nvm". But yeah, sometimes either they don't notice they skipped something, or it is just my presence that makes it work. Lol

> Visions of the Present. You can see events taking place anywhere in the world, but only at the present moment. Doing this takes at least five minutes and some special materials (you may have to improvise if you're in an unfamiliar area), and lets you create an aspect with two free invokes as if you had succeeded with style on creating an advantage with Lore, but you can be compelled to fail to explain your visions effectively to others.

A friend of mine wants to play a variant human monk with the Tavern Brawler feat. He asked me if he could use improvised Weapons as monk weapons.
I personally haven't played a monk, or a character with the Tavern Brawler feat. As such, I'm having trouble judging whether this is unbalanced or tot...

> Nosebleed Psionic. You have telekinesis, which allows you to control objects at a distance as if you were touching them. If you would normally roll to take an action but are using telekinesis, you can instead automatically succeed on the action by taking stress equal to one plus the target difficulty. You may even choose to succeed with style by taking three extra stress.

Background: We're a group of four players new to Pen & Paper with a seasoned game master. Up to now we haven't had any active contact with magic skills during combats. Due to a mixture of bad tactical decisions on our end and dice rolls in favour of NPCs, another player and I died twice in four s...

tbh, I haven't got any comparison, and the character building process is kind of cumbersome, but you can decide rather freely and really create your own, inidvidual character, so I quite like the ruleset.

@Erik I play a lot of games where character design is phrasal/narrative; your stats are short pithy phrases like "Cocky kid" or "Dedicated to the Rebellion" and your skills are broad things like "Pilot" or "Adult."

There's not a lot of call for figuring out exactly which pre-made mechanics fit your character concept, because the mechanics are really broad until you define them with a couple words that narrow them down to what your character's about.

> No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No TLC and no architecture makes Derpy a dull pony No ŢLC̵ and n̵ơ ar͞çh̨It͡e̡c͡tUre͏ ҉m͝@kes͡ ̨D҉3r͢py͘ ̨á ͠dull҉ ̡p0n͞y̕

Anyway, the table had survived several Summers on our front yard (we weren't exactly rowdy kids anymore by the time we got it so the risk of it breaking was admittedly smallish). Then it survived a car trip to my grandparents in a small countryside village where it sat on the back yard.

@GcL the problem is that by personal experience the people who will "absorb" the cost aren't the same that made the error. So if something went wrong either because the architect didn't actually architecture anything or because knowledge of topics was just made up from smoke&mirrors, the one who will get the "fun" to fix the delay are the last wheel of the train - the devs

Then it came back for me. It was a fairly large table, we planned to have it on the balcony. It had to be transported with the glass sheet separate from the frame because of its size and my parents were, in their own words, "a bit surprised the sheet made it intact all the way to Helsinki" because the ride had been a tad bumpy. So we carry it reaaaally carefully to the balcony and I reaaaally carefully position it to wait for installation

In retrospect, I noticed my mistake: our balcony floor is coarse concrete so uh. There probably was some sharp, hard wedge that the entire glass sheet's weight rested on. I just didn't think of it in advance because there were two people observing me laying the sheet to rest: my mother and my SO. With them I expect to hear of it whenever I'm doing anything wrong in the slightest :)

@NautArch In a game I will be joining next week, they permit a handful of DMsGuild content, one of which includes a cleric domain that lets you undo one activity at the cost of exhaustion. And I also found a subrace of halfling who can recover from all exhaustion (rather than just one) at a long rest, meaning one could rewind time much more frequently than is probably intended

Also, one of the permitted 3rd party has something called hemomancy that includes spells that cost HP in addition to spell slots, which can definitely be manipulated with powerful healing and damage reduction

I hate to make assumptions but I'm not going to be surprised if it turns out these guys are pretty young and there are some stereotypical interpersonal dynamics going on there, with one female player being extremely disruptive yet the group would be upset about excluding her

it also wouldn't help, since it's established that she knows full well she's not allowed to cast spells she hasn't prepared by the rules but wants to anyway and will simply argue with the DM until they let her do it.

@NautArch Or, if the group really doesn't mind (and aren't just tolerating out of fear of losing the player), play heavily rules-light and RACS/RAF a bit. I don't like playing that way, but I've heard of groups that do

Okay I admit I'm new to D&D. I've been playing for 2 years now and only been playing 5e. I don't learn by reading the entire manual in one sitting, I have learnt everything from actually playing the game through trial and error and observing others. And I like to think it has worked, but I get th...

@NautArch I have played at rules-light tables (just didn't enjoy them as much) and the GM doesn't actually keep track of monster hit points and stuff. They don't "step up" the encounters, they just let them run until it seems like a good stopping point and let the narration drive the combat almost entirely.

@NautArch Yeah I honestly have a hard time getting a read on what this player's deal is specifically. I wouldn't think changing systems is a good option here though because the rest of the people seem to be enjoying D&D the "right" way.

@NautArch I mean, as the DM I run the game, not the character. I expect my players to know how their class works and to follow those rules on their own. if they have questions, then by all means ask. Otherwise I'm busy with running stuff

@G.Moylan Yeah, but if I"ve got a player who is having issues with the rules, I tend to dive more deeply intot heir character sheet to help them specifically. The character is part of the game I'm running.

@G.Moylan Speculating about the player's motives isn't helpful. Conversely, since this is 90% a player problem and less so game mechanics problem, having the DM clarify those motives is part of the solution.

time is real, it's our measure of it that is the illusion. Time is irrefutable and marches ever forward. We've just arbitrarily decided that when those lines get to that place on that dial thing, it's time to eat.

thinking about my new spells for 4th level (still debating between Resilient CON/Fade Away), but thining I might continue to go utility. FInd Familiar (if I can get a small brazier when we go into town) and Tenser's. We're mostly a party of small creatures, but we've got two medium who are pretty big/heavy. Might need tenser's to transport one if they go down and we're out of spell slots to heal.